Roger Spalding, Edge Hill College of Higher Education
EP Thompson and the Popular Front

Frehiwot Tesfaye
The Relevance of the Contributions of E.P. Thompson and Rodney Hilton in Understanding
Ethiopian Society and History

Stephen Woodhams, Visiting Fellow, Birkbeck College
New wine in old bottles: the transformation of a generation

Conference Themes
How might the extraordinary body of historical writing produced by the 'British
Marxist historians' - Edward Thompson, Christopher Hill, Rodney Hilton, Eric
Hobsbawm, Victor Kiernan, Dona Torr, John Saville, Dorothy Thompson, George
Rudé and others - enable scholars and activists to better understand
the making of social movements? This is a timely moment to examine their legacy.
Many social movement scholars are pushing beyond the static 'models' drawn from
rational-choice theory and the crude and reductive 'new movement'/'old movement'
dichotomies developed by European social theory. What can social movement scholars
and activists learn from a critical engagement with the historiography of movement
and protest in the writings of the British Marxist historians? And from the
theoretical and conceptual innovations developed through their history writing?
What might be learnt from the sensibility and style of the British Marxist historians,
from their 'committed' social and political relation to their subject, to their
writing of history 'from the bottom up'? And what can social movement studies
- now in an exciting period of sustained growth, connected to the rebirth of
popular protest, and a locus for fruitful academic-activist dialogue - bring
to this exchange?

We invite proposals for papers, which explore any aspect of the legacy of the
British Marxist historians for the study of popular protest and social movements.
Themes include:

Theorising social movements

Class, gender, 'race' and social movement

The cultural and moral mediation of protest and movement,

Agency and the individual-in-the-movement,

Ideology, discourse and the study of social movements

'The People' and protest

Protest as ethic

The leadership of social movements

Revolutions and social movements

The 'primitive rebel'

Using sources to study social movements

Literature and the study of protest

Gramsci and the British Marxist Historians

Offers of Papers

FINAL DEADLINE FOR 400 WORD PROPOSALS: MARCH 1 2002

Email offers of papers to the conference organiser johnsona@edgehill.ac.uk
or write to Alan Johnson. Offers of papers should not be more than 400 words long and should be submitted by 1 March 2002. Full papers, maximum length 8,000 words, must be submitted by 6 May 2002 to enable their advance distribution to conference participants. The conference organiser will actively pursue publication of a selection of conference papers.

Conference Arrangements

Edge Hill College of Higher Education is situated just outside the market town
of Ormskirk, 30 miles from Liverpool and Manchester, and twenty minutes from
the seaside resort of Southport. From Manchester Airport, a train can be taken
to Ormskirk Station, changing at Preston Station.

The cost of the full conference package will be £130 (en suite room)
or £100 (standard room), which will include accommodation, conference
fees, conference papers, refreshments, lunches, evening meals. Further details
of costs are listed on the attached downloadable booking form. Please return
the booking form and payment to Marcy McNally, Secretary to the Social Movements
Research Group, Centre for the Study of the Social Sciences, Edge Hill College
of Higher Education, St Helens Road, Ormskirk, Lancashire, England L39 4QP.

Alan Johnson
Edge Hill College of Higher Education Social Movements Research Group and Historical
Materialism Journal (conference organiser)

Stephen Woodhams
Socialist History Society

Alan Johnson
Reader in Sociology and History
Centre for Studies in the Social Sciences
Edge Hill College of Higher Education
St Helens Road
Ormskirk
Lancashire
United Kingdom
LA39 4QPEmail: johnsona@edgehill.ac.uk

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